Local Chinese

Local Chinese

Here in Lexington and Versailles KY we have local chinese restaurants called "Wok 'N Go". I think they're just in KY, and they beat most of our Chinese carry-outs hands down. They're not fancy, and they're not buffets, but you can dine in or carry out and it's not gourmet but for the price you get maximum bang for the buck. Check them out if you're in KY, you can do a lot worse.

In NYC we are filled with "chinese." But I do remember one thing - to never go to the bathroom alone in a Chinese restaurant because you'd be kidnapped and sent to China as a child slave. Was that only in Brooklyn, NY or did they do kidnappings all over the US?

In NYC we are filled with "chinese." But I do remember one thing - to never go to the bathroom alone in a Chinese restaurant because you'd be kidnapped and sent to China as a child slave. Was that only in Brooklyn, NY or did they do kidnappings all over the US?

I think the kidnap thing was in Brooklyn only. They love the accent over in mainland China, so Brooklyn slaves go for a big buck.

In NYC we are filled with "chinese." But I do remember one thing - to never go to the bathroom alone in a Chinese restaurant because you'd be kidnapped and sent to China as a child slave. Was that only in Brooklyn, NY or did they do kidnappings all over the US?

I've done an awful lot of shopping in Chinatown, and love it, but I've also used the facilities in some of the places, and there's something much, much scarier than being kidnapped. Although nothing compared to the "bathroo" I had to use in Cayey, PR, at the ballpark, years ago.I cringe at the memory.

In NYC we are filled with "chinese." But I do remember one thing - to never go to the bathroom alone in a Chinese restaurant because you'd be kidnapped and sent to China as a child slave. Was that only in Brooklyn, NY or did they do kidnappings all over the US?

That notion probably derived from the Barbary Coast here in San Francisco which is adjacent to Chinatown but different. In Barbary Coast bars, sailors were given drinks that would knock them out--I believe this is where the term "Mickey Finn" may have come from--or they were sometimes just clubbed on the head and taken aboard ship to fill out the crew for the run to Shanghi (hence the term "shanghied" since the proximity to the goldfields made trained sailors a skilled and valuable commodity.

Anyway, Chinese restaurants are in no short supply here in SF (except, it seems, in my hood since I can't think of a really good one within easy walking distance--though the local standard for being "good" is pretty high). When I first moved here there was a local chain called Yet-Wah that had so many outlets I used to facetiously measure distances in "yet-wah's" (equivalent to approximately 2.5 blocks).

These myths about "white slavery" are found in different places. I remember when I lived in France over twenty years ago, and my host mother took her sons and myself to a Morroccan restaurant...and insisted that we not go to the restroom alone, because the "Arabs" had false floors in the bathrooms that would pull out, and members of both genders would fall in, be drugged, and shipped off to serve at the whim of some "sheik," never to be heard from again. Unbelievable, yet I found out that she was not unique in her insistence that this type of thing was a common occurrence in Morroccan/Tunisian restaurants, as well as clothing stores run by the same ethnic groups. Pretty incredible.